bonne année

we celebrated with a fruits-de-mer style dinner which is vaguely traditional in France. All the fishmongers were very busy. The off-licences were queuing out the door, most people buying champagne.

I just finished making a basic wooden frame for an 1812 map of paris we bought from the archives a few months ago. It's now hanging on the wall of our salon. Rue des Boulets, where we now live, is on the map but our little impasse looks like it was farmland. Of course all the main boulevards constructed by Hausmann didn't arrive until later in the 19th century, so the city looks quite different.